Books by Alexandra Fuller always take my breath away and leave me speechless for a while after I finish reading them. This remains true with her latest, Leaving Before the Rains Come. If you haven’t read Alexandra Fuller you are in for a rare treat and a wild ride. Start at the beginning with Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight, about her childhood in Africa in the midst of the Rhodesian wars, and just keep reading all her books…
Prince Lestat by Anne Rice is the latest in The Vampire Chronicles, the first new addition to this series in over two decades. I loved the original books, but was underwhelmed by this latest installment. Rice continues to enchant with her wonderful details of place, decor, clothing, etc, but the story was bogged down by the sheer scope of all the vampires included in this novel. It felt like a 500 page encyclopedia, a whose who of the vampire world….
The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright is a wonderful novel about starting over after fifty. A woman whose very rich, older husband dies and leaves her wealthy and alone in his big house, comes out of mourning to find herself a little lost. By chance she wanders into a Ballroom Dancing studio in her town and thus begins her journey into a whole new world. This novel could only have been written by a Ballroom Dancer, as Wright brings the…
2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino is a day in the life of almost ten year old Madeleine Altimari. Madeleine doesn’t have any friends in her fifth grade class at school, she’s just been expelled, her mother has recently died, her father is lost in grief, and all she really wants to to is sing. Bertino weaves together beautifully the stories of Jazz Club owner Lorca, in debt and about to lose his club, Madeleine’s teacher Sarina,…
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde is the second book in his Thursday Next series. If you enjoyed his first book, you will surely enjoy this one, as it is more of the same. Next’s husband has been eradicated, and to get him back she has to find her way into the poems of Edgar Allen Poe. Before she can do that, she must enter Great Expectations, to apprentice with Miss Havisham and learn how to book jump….
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, is a beautifully crafted post-apocalyptic novel unlike others in the same genre. After a flu wipes out 99 percent of Earth’s population, those left are finding a way to live. The novel moves back and forth through time, from an actor who dies on the night the pandemic starts, to the paramedic in training who tries to revive him, to a child actor who survives, and 20 years later is living with a…
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fford is the first novel in a series of novels about detective Thursday Next. Set in Britain in the 80’s, Fford has created a world where the barrier between literature and reality is bendable and it is possible to steal characters out of novels and poems, or even enter into them yourself. You must completely suspend your disbelief to enjoy this story. Sometimes it worked for me and sometimes it didn’t, but it’s hard not…
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate is the second book in the Isabel Dalhousie Series by Alexander McCall Smith. These books have a weightier quality to them than the more lighthearted Ladies No.1 Detective Agency Series. Set in Edinburgh, Isabel Dalhousie is another wonderful, strong, intelligent, female lead character. She is a philosopher and a bit of an investigator herself. In this book, she meets a man who has recently had a heart transplant, and now is having strange dreams, almost like memories….
Good Things is the debut novel by Mia King. After five years of her own TV show in Seattle called ‘Live Simple,’ Deidre’s show is cancelled. She also looses her apartment the same week and is conveniently offered the use of a country home by a gorgeous, rich stanger she happens to meet. Its all a little too good to be true for my taste, which seems to be a theme in the books I’ve been reading lately. What are…
Goodnight June by Sarah Jio is a novel that imagines how the classic children’s book Goodnight Moon came to be. June is a successful banker in NYC when her Aunt Ruby, who raised her, dies and leaves June her Seattle bookstore, Bluebird Books. While going through her late Aunt’s papers, June finds a series of letters between her Aunt Ruby, and Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon. This discovery alters the course of June’s life in more ways than…